Boeing and the union representing thousands of its engineers and technical employees have reached a tentative four-year contract agreement, potentially averting a strike by workers whose expertise is central to the aircraft maker’s efforts to bring delayed jets into service.
The agreement, announced Friday by officials of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), comes after union members overwhelmingly rejected Boeing’s initial contract proposal in an August 21 vote.
Under the tentative agreement, approximately 17,000 SPEEA members in the union’s professional and technical units would receive a 10% general wage increase on October 16, if the contract is approved. Workers would then receive 4% general wage increases in each year from 2027 through 2030, in addition to merit-based increases.
The proposed raises represent a significant improvement over Boeing’s earlier offer, which included annual general wage increases of just 3%. Several SPEEA members had told Reuters that such increases could leave their pay struggling to keep pace with inflation.
Inflation has remained a particularly important issue for workers in the Seattle area, where the majority of SPEEA members are based. The Consumer Price Index for the Seattle area, a key measure of changes in consumer prices, increased 4.5% over the year through July, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Boeing said the revised proposal was designed to address concerns raised by employees during negotiations.
"Our final contract offer addresses the top priorities identified by our employees and SPEEA’s bargaining teams, including an immediate wage increase and larger wage pools with guarantees," Boeing's Ben Nimmergut, vice president and functional chief engineer for production engineering, said in a statement.
The latest proposal also contains changes affecting workplace policies. According to SPEEA, the agreement would make adjustments to work-from-home policies and overtime limits for employees in the professional unit.
The changes follow weeks of negotiations after union members made clear that higher guaranteed wage increases were their primary concern. Following the rejection of Boeing’s first offer, SPEEA conducted an internal survey in which members identified general wage increases as their top priority.
The union’s negotiating team said those responses played a direct role in the subsequent bargaining process.
“We heard you clearly, in your survey responses and comments at Town Hall meetings. We took your words with us back to the table, and they shaped every conversation we had with Boeing executives," SPEEA's negotiating team said in a statement.
The negotiating team acknowledged that the tentative agreement does not meet every demand made by members but argued that it represents meaningful progress.
The tentative deal "isn’t everything we’d asked for, but it represents a real step forward toward improving our pay and work lives and rebuilding the relationship between Boeing leadership and our union’s members," the team said.
The agreement must still go through the union’s approval process before it becomes a final contract.
The timing is significant. The current labor agreement expires October 6, meaning workers could be in a position to strike if a new contract is not finalized by then.
A strike would potentially add another challenge to Boeing as the company works to recover from production problems, regulatory scrutiny and delays affecting several aircraft programs.
SPEEA members play an important role in Boeing’s engineering and certification work, including efforts to certify the 737 MAX 10 and 777-9, two aircraft programs that are already years behind schedule.
For Boeing, avoiding a disruption among its engineering workforce could therefore be particularly important as the company seeks to advance those programs and address its broader production and delivery challenges.
The tentative agreement also marks an important moment in the relationship between Boeing and SPEEA. The union has not negotiated a new contract for its Northwest members with the company since 2012. Instead, members approved contract extensions in 2016 and 2020.
The proposed agreement now puts the focus on union members, who will ultimately determine whether the new terms are sufficient to end the latest round of labor tensions and provide Boeing’s engineering workforce with a new contract through 2030.